Paul Waldman at The Washington Post details the latest tension in the GOP:
If you’re a Republican, you surely thank the heavens for the Koch brothers, billionaires willing to spend vast sums to help Republicans get elected. But could the Kochs actually pose a serious threat to the Republican Party itself?
That’s the question raised by a fascinating new report from Jon Ward of Yahoo News on a brewing conflict between the Kochs and the Republican National Committee over voter files. While this looks like a somewhat arcane dispute over data and software, it actually gets to the heart of a transition now going on in American politics — one Republicans initiated, perhaps without quite understanding it, and one that now threatens to make their party wither on the vine.
For years, Republicans have been fighting to empower people like the Kochs and increase their political power, and now the Kochs may end up swallowing the Republican Party itself.
Jon Ward, Senior Political Correspondent at Yahoo! News, has all the details:
The RNC is now openly arguing, however, that the Kochs’ political operation is trying to control the Republican Party’s master voter file, and to gain influence over — some even say control of — the GOP.
“I think it’s very dangerous and wrong to allow a group of very strong, well-financed individuals who have no accountability to anyone to have control over who gets access to the data when, why and how,” said Katie Walsh, the RNC’s chief of staff.
The fight between the RNC’s chairman and the political operatives affiliated with Charles and David Koch over who controls the rich treasury of data on likely Republican voters has raised fundamental questions about what role the party’s central committee — even under the best management — can hope to play in the age of super-PACs. And it raises an even more fundamental question of how you define a political party.
More on the day's top stories below the fold.
Charlie Cook at The National Journal:
Bush could still be the Republican nominee, but I would put his chances no higher than 25 percent—about the same as two other relatively establishment candidates (though many would quibble with that characterization), Sen. Marco Rubio and Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker. We'll have to wait and see whether another quasi-establishment candidate, Ohio Gov. John Kasich, can break through the morass of other candidates into contention as well; the former House Budget Committee chair has arguably the strongest credentials of any contender in either party, though his campaign is off to a relatively late start. But when you add it all up, there's a pretty decent chance—no less than 25 percent, I'd say—that Republicans will opt this time for a strongly anti-establishment candidate, whether it is in the person of Sens. Ted Cruz or Rand Paul or (possibly but less likely) former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee. That means the odds of Republicans doing something outside the box in 2016 are extraordinarily high.
Emily Atkin at Think Progress examines GOP efforts to block Obama's climate and clean water rules:
On Tuesday, the House Appropriations Committee introduced its budget bill for environment-related agencies in fiscal year 2016. That bill includes provisions to block what the committee calls “harmful, costly, and potentially job-killing regulations” from the Environmental Protection Agency, including the much-talked-about Clean Power Plan and the Waters of the United States rule. [...] Along with prohibiting the EPA from implementing those regulations, the bill would reduce the EPA’s funding by $718 million, a 9 percent reduction from fiscal year 2015 levels. According to the Hill, the EPA has already had its funding decreased by 20 percent since Republicans took the House in 2011. In addition, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service would be cut by $8 million, and the Department of Interior would be forced to stop giving federal protection to endangered gray wolves in Midwestern states.
The Los Angeles Times writes an editorial calling for Congress to act on explicitly forbidding torture:
In 2009, President Obama issued an executive order requiring all interrogators to abide by the manual. In its current form, the manual includes both general language against torture and a specific ban on eight techniques: waterboarding; forcing a detainee to be naked, perform sexual acts, or pose in a sexual manner; placing hoods or sacks over the head of a detainee or using duct tape over the eyes; applying beatings, electric shock, burns or other forms of physical pain; using military working dogs; inducing hypothermia or heat injury; conducting mock executions; and depriving the detainee of necessary food, water or medical care. (The manual says that prohibited actions include, but are not limited to, these specifics.)
[...] In the panic that followed 9/11, the U.S. government forsook American values and traveled to what former Vice President Dick Cheney called the "dark side." It has taken years for this country to reckon with that betrayal of its ideals. It was only last year, for example, that the public was provided with a summary of the conclusions of a Senate Intelligence Committee investigation of Bush-era detention and interrogation policies.
In her foreword to that report, Feinstein, then the committee chairwoman, wrote that Obama's executive order should be "enshrined in legislation." Now is the time for Congress to take that step.
Kristen Gwynne examines the GOP's refusal to honor the equal rights of transgender Americans:
To be sure, trans people face bigotry from people of all political stripes, and from all sectors of society. But historically, the majority of Republican legislators who have voted on LGBT rights legislation have voted against such bills. And Republicans have been almost exclusively responsible for the dozens of anti-trans bills that have been introduced in states and cities around the country.
This year in Nevada, Minnesota, Florida, Kentucky and Texas, for example, Republican lawmakers introduced "bathroom security" bills forcing transgender people to use restrooms designating the gender they were assigned at birth, rather than the gender with which they identify. Collectively, these laws would criminalize the transgender population with misdemeanor charges that carry jail time and hefty fines, hold businesses responsible for allowing trans people to choose which restroom to use, and reward students with thousands of dollars for reporting transgender peers who use the "wrong" bathroom. None of these bills made it through the legislature.
On a final note,
The Des Moines Register says guns should be kept out of college campuses:
un-rights groups will seemingly not rest until every man, woman and child in this country is packing. There is no shortage of state legislators to further that agenda. These elected officials introduce legislation to expand access to firearms, nix restrictions and even provide legal protection to those who “stand their ground” by shooting anyone perceived as a threat. Iowa has a few of these lawmakers.
Texas, however, has many more. They recently passed a bill allowing students with concealed-carry permits to bring their handguns onto public college campuses. While it’s difficult to imagine that parents, professors or fellow students will feel any safer, Gov. Greg Abbott seemed downright excited to sign the bill into law. [...]
The last thing Iowa needs is more guns in the hands of more people in more places. Yet the gun lobby wants easier access to firearms for everyone. And they are making progress